"Anger lashed my mind as I drove back to the village. Butter sent abroad in the midst of the famine! In London, Berlin, Paris I could see ... people eating butter stamped with a Soviet trade mark. Driving through the fields, I did not hear the lovely Ukrainian songs so dear to my heart. These people have forgotten how to sing! I could only hear the groans of the dying, and the lip-smacking of the fat foreigners enjoying our butter..." Victor Kravchenko - Former Soviet trade official and defector

"... On one side, millions of starving peasants, their bodies often swollen from lack of food; on the other, soldiers, members of the GPU*carrying out the instructions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts and taken away everything edible; they had shot or exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert." * GPU = Soviet secret policeMalcolm Muggeridge - British foreign correspondent - May 1933

"this famine may fairly be called political because it was not the result of any overwhelming natural catastrophe or such complete exhaustions of the country's resources in foreign or civil wars"William Henry Chamberlin - Correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor who was originally pro-Soviet. He was one of the few Westerners who personally toured Ukraine during the Genocide of 1932-1933. Russia's Iron Age (London, 1935) p. 82.

"...(Our reporting) served Moscow's purpose of smearing the facts out of recognition and declaring the situation which, had we reported simply and clearly, might have worked up enough public opinion abroad to force remedial measures. And every correspondent each in his own measure, was guilty of collaborating in this monstrous hoax on the world."Eugene Lyons - Moscow United Press correspondent from 1928 - 1934. Assignment in Utopia, p. 573.

" I saw ravages of the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine - hordes of families in rags begging at the railway stations, the women lifting up to the compartment windows their starving brats, which, with drumstick limbs, big cadaverous heads and puffed bellies, looked like embryos out of alcohol bottles." Arthur Koestler, The God That Failed p. 68

“About 20 miles south of Kyiv I came upon a village that was practically extinct by starvation. There had been 15 houses in this village and a population of 40-odd persons. Every dog and cat had been eaten. The horses and oxen had all been appropriated by the Soviets to stock the collective farms. In one hut they were cooking a mess that defied analysis. There were bones, pig-weed, skin and what looked like a boot top in this pot. The way the remaining half dozen inhabitants eagerly watched this slimy mess showed the state of their hunger. One boy of about 15 years of age, whose face and arms and legs were simply tightly drawn skin over bones, had a stomach that was swollen to twice its normal size. He was an orphan; his father had died of starvation a month before and he showed me the body. The boy had covered the body with straw, there being no shovels in the village since the last raid of the Soviet secret police. He stated his mother had gone away one day searching for food and had not returned. This boy wanted to die – he suffered intensely with his swollen stomach and was the only one of the group who showed no interest in the pot that was being prepared.Thomas Walker - American journalist who traveled in Ukraine during the Genocide of 1932-1933.

"Moscow employed the famine as a political weapon against Ukrainians in the year 1932-1933. The famine was in its entirety artificially induced and organized."F.M. Pidigo - Economist who lived and worked in Ukraine during the Genocide of 1932-1933. Investigation of Communist Takeover & Occupation of the Non-Russian Nations of the USSR, p. 35.

"FOUR EARS OF CORN"Recollection of the horrors of the Famine of 1933 had become a sort of ritual in our family. I heard the traumatic story hundreds of times. When I was a child, I ran away every time my mother began to retell her horrible story. But even the bits, I caught on my way out, were enough to give me nightmares. When in time, I became a mother myself, I better grasped the pain my poor mother suffered, and understood the scope of her tragedy. Her endurance and unyielding faith fueled her to survive it all for us, her second family.

The Famine of '33 left lasting scars not only on my parents for the rest of their lives, but to this day, on us children. Unlike my father, who spoke openly about the evils of communism, but wept, trembled and shut down, when asked about the Famine, my mother continued to fear the Soviets even in America, but spoke incessantly of the Famine.

When she spoke—I listened. I knew by heart the sequence of events and the wording of her story. At times, when she jumbled a memory, I cued her discretely. Deeply engraved in my memory is my mother’s last account of the Famine, a month before her death in June of 1983. Her stories became more detailed. Mother named people and events that I had never heard before. Her uncharacteristically fearless tone and serenity struck me as she began her narrative.

I remember that moment vividly. I see my mother’s tidy gray braid on the side of her white pillow. While caressing her head, I asked how she was feeling, she sighed sadly: “ My soul will never rest. My poor darlings!” She lamented. “Maybe your father and I are guilty. WE COULDN'T GET AWAY! We tried to go to Kharkiv or Donbas but the commander commissar refused to issue us our documents. The Army sealed the borders and shot those who approached the railroad. Oh my Lord! There were so many bodies by the tracks!” In her quest for relief of her lifelong open wound, mother continued her story, as if she were telling it to me for the first time.

MY MOTHER’S STORY“All our supply of wheat and other winter provisions were taken from us, including those meager reserves buried in the ground in the orchard or hidden in the woods. Like your grandfather, people were thrown out of their houses and many disappeared during the night. None dared to question. Everyone lived in fear.

“I recall,” she continued, “that in the fall of 1932, I picked four ears of corn from behind our shed and put them out to dry on the bench, so I could make some corn flour for the children. Someone reported it to the collective farm leadership. As an already branded ‘class enemy’, I was accused of stealing the corn from the collective farm and sentenced to five years without witness or trial. All four children were left with your father. He had great merits in the eyes of the Soviet State for he came from a poor family, and therefore was a “proletarian”. Fed’ko, your oldest brother, was then 11 years old and tended cows at the collective farm.

At the prison, I was assigned the job of pickling cabbages and cucumbers. In the spring, I received a desperate letter from your father. Despite the coded wording of his letter, I understood that my little ones were dying of hunger. There are no words to describe my despair. That night, I escaped from prison. I could think only of saving the children.

Afraid of meeting someone on my way, I wandered through the woods on my way home. The villages seemed deserted. Only once did I hear a feeble human voice calling me, at the edge of a village. A man, leaning against a house, was inviting me to stay overnight. My heart stopped. In his shiny bulging eyes, I was sure I saw a mad man. I ran as fast as my feet could carry me. Intuitively, I feared the worst. I had to get home as soon as possible. Putting my destiny in the Lord’s hands, I waded across the stream without knowing how to swim. When I finally reached home, I found my darlings still alive. Swollen, unconscious but alive! I didn’t save them! I couldn’t save them! All three died in my arms a few days apart, just like Oksanka, three days before I was taken to prison.

It was now against the law to bury them in the orchard, as it was customary. The communist rulers threw my angels’ bodies on a cart poled on top of other bodies. This image haunts me all my life—my little Marussia, Halynka and Tarasko being tossed from the cart into a pit outside the village without even a prayer…

My only reason for living was Fed’ko. I was a fugitive and had to hide. To survive, we roamed the fields in search of fallen grains amongst the stubble of the harvested fields. We no longer feared being shot for this crime against the communist state. But there was no other place of work for a peasant but the collective farm, and I had to work. Fed’ko was afraid, he begged me not to go. I promised him that I would return. I promised…"

Mother always broke down when she reached this part. Anticipating it, I sobbed. After calming down, she continued:

“I was standing in line with the others peasants. When my turn came, the brigadier asked my name without lifting his head. Upon my response, he shifted his eyes to a list in front of him, then stood-up and pointing a finger at me shouted: “You, Evdokia Kononivna Boyko, are a fugitive from Soviet law! People like you are a threat to our state. You shall serve your term in full!” My whole world crumbled again. Oh my dearest child! The Lord only knows where I got the strength to shout to the brigadier: “If your children were dying from starvation, wouldn’t you have run away to save them?” He silently lowered his eyes. I was taken to prison on the spot to serve the remainder of my five-year term.”

In 1937, my mother was one of thousands of prisoners on their way to Siberia. She had volunteered to go, for she had lost hope. In Poltava, the prisoners were let out of their wagons and told to kneel in rows facing the sunset. A few dozen prisoners were freed. Blinded by the sun, mother thought she was hearing things: “Evdokia Kononivna Boyko, you are free!” She did not move. She thought it was a dream. Then she heard her name again, “Evdokia Kononivna B… YOU ARE FREE!”

At the prosecutor’s office two letters awaited my mother, letters written by her two former prison wardens. Their recommendation was to free her on grounds of her hardworking, peasant nature and honesty—so indispensable for the building of socialism. The woman prosecutor believed them.

One can only imagine how she ran; or rather, how she flew on her wings of joy from Poltava to Fed’ko! However, her happiness was short lived. That same horrible year of 1937, pregnant with my older sister, mother was on trial again, this time, accused of drowning a swine in a water tank while on her night watch shift at the state pig-breeding farm.

The indictment stated that my mother, a ‘class enemy’ of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR), worked against progress in the planned economy of the state having drowned the swine. The communist system did not allow livestock to die.

The inquest lasted two years. A 10-year sentence hung over my mother’s head. A courageous veterinarian risked his life to pass an honest verdict: the swine had died from natural causes. A necropsy revealed that there was no water in the swine’s lungs. Fearing dismissal or even imprisonment, the farm leader dropped the swine in the tank, conveniently pointing at my mother--already an enemy of the state.

MY PILGRIMAGEPoltava greeted me with a dense grayness that penetrated both faces and nature. In the heavy fog, the naked trees resembled giant skeletons, and one could feel and even smell despair in the air. So, this was my Ukraina! What have they done to your soul and beauty? Kept on pounding in my head.

A solemn Panakhyda* was held in the Tower, the only standing structure, of the once historic Uspenskyj Cathedral dynamited by the Soviets. The angel voices of the children’s choir echoed in the Holy Tower: “Vichnaya Pamiat’, Vichnaya Pamiat’, Vichnaya Pamiat”; in memory eternal of Marussia, Halynka, Tarasko, Oksanka and Fed’ko: “May the Lord safeguard them were all the righteous rest”

After the gloominess of the previous evening, the morning was bright and crisp. I was on my way to fulfill the most sacred part of my promise to mother. The thought of standing on the ground where my ancestors lived, and where my siblings were born and died, was overwhelming.

Kilochky had not changed much since my parents left it 50 years before. The villagers were of the same lineage, and I was still able to see my grandfather’s furrow between his field and his neighbor’s. Only the raven where the bodies of the innocent victims of the Genocide, was leveled off, and a children’s play ground was built on it.

To the children’s surprise, God was in their midst, as a prayer was sung for the first time on their ground, and the smoke from the censer rose to heaven proclaiming God’s love and resurrection to all those innocent souls. May they rest in peace.

* Panakhyda- Memorial Service** Vichnaya Pamiat’ -Memory Eternal

Written by Halyna Boyko-Hrushetsky“Four Ears of Corn” (revised) was originally published in 1993 in “Witness, Stories of Genocide and Urban Survival” created for middle school children in Chicago through a grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Memories of Survivors and Witnesses ofthe Ukrainian Genocide of 1932-1933

EXPERIENCES OF UKRAINIAN GENOCIDE SURVIVORS

"This was the first instance of a peacetime genocide in history. It took the extraordinary form of an artificial famine deliberately created by the ruling powers. The savage combination of words for the designation of a crime - an artificial deliberately planned famine - is still incredible to many people throughout the world, but indicates the uniqueness of the tragedy of 1933, which is unparalleled, for a time of peace, in the number of victims it claimed."Wasyl Hryshko - Genocide Survivor, 1933

"They were horrible years! Mothers were slicing their children and sticking them in pots to cook them, and then ate them. My mother went into the field where some horses were dying and brought back a horse's head. About five women bit into this horse's head. What a horror it was; people were dropping dead on the road. If you pierced them the blood was like water. So many people died. I remember every thing in the village, including the time they took the crosses off the churches. Two members from the Komsomol (Communist Youth Organization) went up and took the crosses down. They buried them two meters into the ground and old women would go to kiss that plot of ground...

Then they filled the wooden church full of wheat. During the night mice made their way through the walls, leaving little holes from which women filled their buckets with the wheat. The Komsomol took the wheat from the church, and afterward it stood empty. So many people died in the village that in the cemetery they stopped putting up crosses. During the winter an old woman would take a cross from the cemetery to make a fire in her house so that her children would not freeze."Nina Popovych - Genocide Survivor - born 1925, Lysycha Balka, Ukraine - from Irene Antonovych and Lialia Kuchma's Generations: A Documentary of Ukrainians in Chicago, p. 32

"In 1932 and 1933 Kyiv seemed like a paradise to nearly villagers who had been stripped of all they had by the Soviet government. A no wonder: some villages were dying out completely, except for those who still had the courage and strength to flee. There were cases where mothers had gone mad and killed a child to feed the rest of the family. So, thousands of villagers flocked to the city of Kyiv. Many of the weak ones sat or lay down by buildings or fences, most never to get up again. Trucks driven by policemen or Communist Youth League members, mobilized for that purpose, went around picking up bodies or carrying those still alive somewhere outside the city limits. It was especially terrible to see mothers whose faces had turned black from hunger with children who no longer cry, but only squeal, moving their lips in an attempt to find sustenance where there was none. People sought salvation and found death. I saw these things as I walked to work through the Haymarket on Pidvil'na Street near the Golden Gates and Volodymyr Street."Varvara Dibert - Genocide Survivor - from Congressional testimony presented before the United States Ukraine Famine Commission in Washington, DC, October 8, 1986.

"The spring of 1933 was the most horrible and tragic moment in the history of the Ukrainian people. In th fall of 1932 and the early winter of 1933 the Russian Communist government had taken away the entire grain crop and all food produce from the Ukrainian farmers in order to bring them into submission and obedient servitude in the collective farms.

In the collective farms of my native district, which numbered 672 people, 164 died that fatal spring of 1933. Actually this collective farm suffered little compared with all the surrounding places, for to induce the farmers to remain there, they were given 300 grams of bread per person baked from all kinds of chaff and some liquid concoction cooked from refuse. But there were villages and hamlets where not a single person remained alive. For instance, in the large village of Chemychyna, in Neforoshchanske County, which stretched for two and a half miles, though I do not recall it's population, and the hamlet Rybky, of the Sukho-Mayachka village administration, where 60% of the population died.

Here is another of the many incidents of the famine:

In my native village, there was a stallion kept for breeding mares. He was well fed, receiving 13 pounds of oats daily, but for some unknown reason, he suddenly died. This happened at the end of May 1933. This district administration forbid the stallion to be buried, until a special commission arrived and held an inquest.

The dead stallion lay in the open for three days and began to decay. A guard was appointed to shield it from the starving people who would have eaten the meat. On the fourth day the commission arrived and, having completed the investigation, ordered the stallion to be buried.

No sooner was that done and the commission gone, then like an avalanche, the people descended on the dead, decaying stallion and, in an instant, nothing was left of him. Violent arguments ensued, because some had grabbed more than their share.

A spectacle I shall never forget was when a 16 year old boy who, beside his stepmother, was the only survivor in the family, and swollen from starvation, crawled up to the place where the dead stallion had been and finding a hoof, snatched it in both hands and gnawed at it furiously. The boy was never seen again, and rumors circulated, that he had been eaten by his stepmother.

It was forbidden for people to leave their villages. GPU* guards blocked all roads and railways. Any food that farmers happened to be carrying was taken away from them. For picking a stray head of wheat or a frozen potato or beet left behind in the field, a person was sentenced to ten years in prison or concentration camp, according to the ruling passed by the government August 7, 1932.

Thousands of corpses littered the streets, byways and buildings. Deaths occurred at such a rate that the government could not keep up with burying the corpses.

During all this time there was not the slightest sign of any famine in the neighboring Russian territory. The Soviet press never mentioned the famine in Ukraine but on the contrary, (even) printed misleading propaganda about "flowering Ukraine" and her great achievements in industry and collectivization.

To cover up its bloody crime, the Soviet government warned all doctors not to state true cause of death on death certificates. Instead, they stated a prevalent digestive ailment was the cause."

*GPU = Soviet secret police

Polikarp Kybkalo - Genocide Survivor testimony presented before the United States Ukraine Famine Commission in Washington, DC on October 8, 1986

In 1931, I was ten years old, and I remember well what happened in my native village in the Kyiv region. In the spring of that year, we had virtually no seed. The Communists had taken all the grain, and although they saw that we were weak and hungry, they came and searched for more grain. My mother had stashed away some corn that had already sprouted, but they found that, too, and took it. What we did manage to sow, the starving people pulled up out of the ground and ate.

In the villages and on the collective farms (our village had two collectives), a lot of land lay fallow, because people had nothing to sow, and there wasn't enough manpower to do the sowing. Most people couldn't walk, and those few who could, had no strength. When, at harvest time, there weren't enough local people to harvest the grain, others were sent in to help on the collectives. These people spoke Russian, and they were given provisions.

After the harvest, the villages tried to go out in the field to look for a few gleanings of wheat or cabbage, and the Communists would arrest them and shoot them or send them to Siberia. My aunt, Tatiana Rudenko, was taken away. They said she had stolen the property of the collective farm.

That summer, the vegetables couldn't even ripen. People pulled them out of the ground, still green, and ate them. People ate leaves, nettles, milk thistle. By autumn, no one had any chickens or cattle. Here and there, someone had a few potatoes or beets. People coming from other villages, told the very same story. They would travel all over trying to get food. They would fall by the roadside, and none of us could do anything to help them. Before the ground froze, they were just left lying there dead in the snow or, if they died in the house, they were dragged out to the cattle- shed, and they would lie there frozen until spring. There was no one to dig graves.

All the train stations were overflowing with starving, dying people. Everyone wanted to go to Russia (the RSFSR) because it was said that there was no famine there. Very few (of those left) returned. They all perished on the way. They weren't allowed into Russia and were turned back at the border. Those who somehow managed to get to Russia, were able to save themselves.

In February of 1933, there were so few children left that the schools were closed. By this time, there wasn't a cat, dog, or sparrow in the village. In that month, my cousin Mykailo Rudenko died. A month later my aunt Nastia Klymenko and her son, my cousin Ivan, died, as well as my classmate, Dokia Klymenko. There was cannibalism in our village.

On my farmstead, an 18 year old boy, Danylo Hukhlib, died and his mother and younger sisters and brothers cut him up and ate him. The Communists came and took them away, and we never saw them again. People said they took them a little ways of and shot them right away, the little ones and the older ones, together.

At that time, I remember, I had heavy, swollen legs. My sister Tamara, had a large swollen stomach, and her neck was long, and thin, like a bird's neck. People didn't look like people. They were more like starving ghosts.

The ground thawed, and they began to take the dead to the ravine in ox carts. The air was filled with the reeking odor of decomposing bodies. The wind carried this odor far and wide. It was thus over all of Ukraine."Tatiana Pawlichka - Genocide Survivor testimony before the United States Ukraine Famine Commission in Washington, DC on October 8, 1986.